Filming

First Shoot:

Me, Zoran and Oliver began our first and main shoot on a Tuesday when we were all free. Zoran helped me with some of the shots but I filmed the bulk of the shots which contain Oliver, and he filmed the scenes which I am in, however I filmed the final shot. We were always making sure that the framing and steadiness of the shots was as impeccable as possible. Using our storyboard as our guide, we achieved a certain shot and then ticked it off on our storyboard sheets. We went along doing this until we had completed filming. It took roughly about two hours to shoot the shots we needed. We all preferred the quick, sponateous film making method as we felt quite confident with all the preparation we had made.

The main highlight of the shoot was achieving a shot that was not really planned at all but one that we took advantage of when we relaised its potential. It is the shot where Oliver is stood, waiting at the door for an answer. We knew his reflection could be seen in the door window and Oliver had the idea of me, answering the door, and stepping into the reflection from behind the glass. I thought it gave the antagonist of our thriller a creepy, menacing side. On another note, it might be a subtle suggestion on a second viewing of the film, that this character is distinguishing his victim's reflection just before he finally distinguishes his life.

Re-shoot:

The one and only reshoot we did was based on some audience responses that we got back from people seeing a rough cut of out film. Some people said they really liked the "lurking presence" of the shot at the end of the film, but felt that the end of the shot, where the body of the man is revealed lying dead on the sofa, is too shaky. We all had to agree and felt that this was one shot that it was essential to re-shoot. Some other critical feedback mentioned that it was not really clear that the man was dead, and that they would have liked to have seen more blood to confirm this.

Reshooting the final shot was an effective way of killing two birds with one stone, in that we would correct the shaky camera, and add blood into the shot. It was decided that me and Oliver would film the reshoot as Zoran was not available at that time. We used red food colouring on Oliver's t-shirt and ketchup to give the blood a thick look. One of the main reasons the original shot was shaky was because the battery was low and were rushing to get the shot done before it died. With this in mind on the day of the re-shoot, I brought my fully charged camera, and secured it tightly to the tripod, to ensure no accidental camera shake. Oliver got in his position on the sofa, and I began to film the final shot again, concentrating most on keeping the camera as smooth as possible. It took a few tries, but we eventually achieved a shot we were both quite pleased with. When I put this shot into Sony Vegas to replace the orignal shot, I had to change the colour correction on the shot to give it as close a resemblance to the original shots as possible.

Also worth mentioning, is the fact that we changed the prop of the gun. When we came to the re-shoot, we could not find the gun we used in the original footage, so we had to use another one that we could find. To the left is the gun that we eventually used.